The Gift
by D Veleniet
Summary: Her breathing rises and falls on shallow heaves and he finds his traitorous fingers tightening their grip on her. Like he could corral all of her precious breaths if he just held her enough. She pats his hand and tells him he doesn't have to stay. "I know you don't like endings," she says, and her quiet acceptance breaks something in him. Last Christmas AU; subtle Whouffle.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own these characters. All rights to the BBC and Steven Moffat. (Snippets of dialogue taken from "A Christmas Carol")

**Author's Note**: As joyous as the last scene of "Last Christmas" was, I was almost desperate to know how Moffat originally wrote it to include Jenna's exit (if various sources and contextual evidence referencing Clara's death in 2 different episodes are to be believed). I doubt it went anything like this, but I had to give it a go. :-p

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><p><em>Could you do it? Could you do this? Think about it, Doctor. One last day with your beloved. Which day would you choose? <em>

He tries not to think about the time he's missed. He tries not to think of the minutes and hours that add up to days; of the weeks and months that add up to years; of the years that add up to decades. He tries not to notice that she can only reach for his hands with arms that waver, the rest of her body too weak to support her _I just get so tired these days_, she says, gratefully leaning back against the pillows he props behind her head, her eyes closing in obvious relief from even that minute of an exertion.

Her fingers won't cooperate with the cracker, refusing to lend her the strength to keep her grip so he wraps his fingers around hers and pulls for her. He feels the knobs of prominent veins underneath, the only difference he can note in her after those 62 years. Her hands. They are not smooth and unmarked like they'd been in their dreams. They are hands that marked up students' notebooks in every European country; hands that shunned suitor after suitor and stayed free of rings that bound her to anyone else. Hands that guided airplanes into glorious, weightless flight and negotiated landings both bumpy and seamless.

She laments her inability to read the joke inside the cracker (she can't remember where she put her glasses), so he plops down next to her and tells her they'll read it together. The slip of paper trembles between her arthritic fingers. He tries not to think about how her hands might be tired of holding onto things.

The joke is stupid, so he makes one up. A knock-knock joke where he says _Doctor_ and she says _Doctor who?_ And he can almost hear the smile in her voice.

She rests her head against him, and his hand develops a will of its own, stubbornly curling around her shoulder when he only meant to give her a pat. Her breathing rises and falls on shallow heaves and he finds his traitorous fingers tightening their grip on her. Like he could corral all of her precious breaths if he just held her enough.

But it's not enough.

She pats his hand and tells him he doesn't have to stay. "I know you don't like endings," she says, and her quiet acceptance breaks something in him.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek to prevent a scream from escaping his throat. He tells himself it's because she's wasting her breaths. He tells himself it's because she's not jealously guarding every last one, frustrating his efforts to keep them all contained. He tells himself it's because she's using them on him.

Most of all, he tells himself that it's _not_ because she used the word _endings_.

It's not enough, so he withdraws his hand from underneath hers and wraps it around her collarbone, gently pulling her towards him until she is flush against his chest. He doesn't think about how it feels like minutes ago that she had pulled him into a similar embrace in Dream Santa's sleigh. He doesn't think about how he had flinched at the touch – or how he had flinched at every touch of hers before that. He doesn't think of words like _regret_.

But Clara clearly remembers every one of his flinches and weakly reminds him that he doesn't like hugging.

There is nothing he can say, so he hugs her tighter, holds her closer. He thinks maybe with both arms around her, he can jumpstart her heart. His embrace had always been enough in the past to do just that, after all.

But this isn't the past – it's the future. It's _her _future. Somehow her future has become his present – and he's come too late and gone too far. And yet – he's come too soon, stumbling blindly into this moment, this moment that he wants to run as far away from as he can and that he also wants to neutralize and bottle up like he had the Dream Crab. To stow it away in a big, glass jar, contents sealed inside.

She reaches a hand up and rests it on his arm. The sigh she lets out makes him bristle: another breath squandered. Another bit of her life carelessly tossed away, strewn into the uncaring air around them.

And he knows it's still not enough.

He needs something drastic. He needs Time Lord technology. No - he needs Time Lord _art_. He needs to freeze her in this single moment like he did Gallifrey. And he'll hang her in the TARDIS, a portrait of Clara that's bigger on the inside with all of her breaths and heartbeats contained safely within while he continues to look for his planet. Then once he finds it, he'll unlock this moment and show her Gallifrey. Because only then will it be home.

"I think I knew," she says suddenly, simultaneously startling and angering him for talking again. "That was my dream, so it couldn't have been Danny. Anything he said was really me, wasn't it?"

His hand reaches up to cover her mouth, to stopper all her breaths whilst his brain flies at a million miles a minute. He stashed the translation cube somewhere in the TARDIS; it won't be difficult to locate. And with the sympathetic hum in the corner of his mind, he knows the TARDIS will help. Now he just has to figure out how to do it without leaving this bed.

Clara twists to look at him, but he doesn't see her. He's silently prodding, his gruff commands escalating to shouts, then spiraling into desperate pleas with his ship. _Comegetuscomegetuscomegetus! _The TARDIS gently but firmly pushes back, the equivalent of throwing up her hands helplessly as schematics and diagrams and lack of programmed coordinates swirl through his mind.

"Doctor?" Those fingers that are probably tired of holding things find a way to hook under his chin and make him finally look at her. Finally _see_ her.

And something in her eyes brings back a memory of another woman from a Christmas long ago.

_I think you waited a bit too long, didn't you? Hoarding my days, like an old miser._

His hand drops, fingertips resting dangerously close to her heart. "Yes," he finally says.

"Because I didn't need someone to tell me that," she continues. "But maybe…maybe it wasn't me convincing myself. Maybe it was so you could hear it."

Some part of him registers that her hair is a different colour; that her skin is sagging and covered in lines. But he can only see those comically wide, brown eyes, her gaze so open. "Hear what?"

Her hand moves to his cheek and he doesn't even have to remind himself not to flinch this time. "That you gather with your loved ones on Christmas because it might be the last time." She smiles softly. "That every Christmas is last Christmas."

He thinks that she'll turn around again, but she doesn't. Instead, she looks at him until his face betrays him, making him wish he could hide it. She looks at him until her eyes begin to drift shut, that last bit of fight in her ebbing away. She looks at him until she manages one last smile, until her eyes finally close.

And that's when he starts talking to her. He talks about the first time he ever met her, and then he talks about the other first time he met her. He goes on to talk about the _actual _first time he met her, and then, for good measure, throws their final first time encounter in there.

Once he starts, he can't stop. He talks about the first time they visited another planet and the first time they traveled into the past. He talks about the first time she got angry at him in his previous body and the first time she cried around him in this body. He talks about the first time she made him laugh and the first time they laughed together. On and on, he piles first's into their space like the sheer number of them will somehow transform into something that rises up and overpowers these last's.

He doesn't talk about how apart from the TARDIS, she's been with him the longest out of anyone. He doesn't talk about all the times or all the ways she's saved him. And he certainly doesn't talk about how he doesn't know - and doesn't want to know - how to live in a Universe without Clara Oswald in it.

He stays. He stays until her breathing slows, until he can count the seconds between her heartbeats, each moment of silence an unbearable infinity. He stays until the only warmth left is his own, which is his first sign that something in the Universe has gone horribly wrong.

Because what kind of Universe would allow the Doctor to be warmer than Clara?

Even then, it isn't enough. But he can't leave her yet. He has one more thing to tell her, one final confession that he whispers brokenly in her ear, his face hidden.

"_You were wrong, Clara. Every Christmas isn't last Christmas. And how do I know? Because next Christmas will only be Next Christmas. And every Christmas after that will be Next Christmas. But only this Christmas…this Christmas is Last Christmas."_

And even that isn't enough, but it's okay because now he knows that nothing will ever be enough. But it's what he can give her – it's all he can give her.

It's their last Christmas, and this is his gift to her.

_*Fin* _


End file.
